Lasinio, etching
Interior of the Camposanto
...Some of the greatest painters of 12th and 13th century, from
Taddeo Gaddi to Benozzo Gozzoli have engaged themselves in the
task.
Alas, I have found this wonderful monument in a protracted state of neglect if it’s true that the etcher Carlo Lasinio as early as 1806 wrote:
“The Camposanto I found in a horrifying state; everyone was allowed entry upon payment, and to wreak havoc in the place, everything was falling down, especially Benozzo’s paintings, that were coming off the walls in chunks because of the damp. All you could see was saw-horses, heaps of boards in the middle, scaffolds, trestles, ladders, beams, timbering and all sorts of dismissed materials from other sites.
Hawks and owls and rats took it as a safe haven and awfully fouled the paintings, and the eagle-owls soiled of whitewash-like dung all the paintings as they flew out, so that I went insane to clean them; the grass snakes were up to seven foot-long and very scary for their vile looks.
The air was foul and grass was mowed but once a year, so that you could hide in it, and the soil being loamy it emanated a foul smell.
People would play ball there and nothing was decent about it, everything dishevelled, everything shattered, the keepers trafficking with strangers, and after exacting a tip, they let them do what they pleased, such as writing on the walls, on paintings and marbles, in short nothing could be filthier, nothing more derelict.
Water seeped all over through the roof down to the foundations, and it is a blessing that it has withstood centuries of such barbarity”.
I was able to see the reproductions of such frescoes that Carlo Lasinio himself made as a memorial for posterity.
Yet these walls that retain a single, circular path in the history of Italian painting cannot but stir the spirit of the more sensitive visitor. This cycle of frescoes spanning from the giottoesque “revolution” to the forerunners of Renaissance has touched many travellers that came to Italy beguiled by its art. So much so that Liszt thus describes, in a letter to Hector Berlioz, his visit to the Camposanto:
“San Rossore, 2nd October, 1839
Art was presenting itself before my eyes in all its splendour, universality and truth. Both feelings and reasoning convinced me more and more every day of the hidden ties that bind works of genius together. The Colosseum and the Camposanto are not alien to the Heroic Symphony or the Requiem as it might seem…”.
From that visit Liszt drew inspiration for his opera "Totentanz".
Alas, I have found this wonderful monument in a protracted state of neglect if it’s true that the etcher Carlo Lasinio as early as 1806 wrote:
“The Camposanto I found in a horrifying state; everyone was allowed entry upon payment, and to wreak havoc in the place, everything was falling down, especially Benozzo’s paintings, that were coming off the walls in chunks because of the damp. All you could see was saw-horses, heaps of boards in the middle, scaffolds, trestles, ladders, beams, timbering and all sorts of dismissed materials from other sites.
Hawks and owls and rats took it as a safe haven and awfully fouled the paintings, and the eagle-owls soiled of whitewash-like dung all the paintings as they flew out, so that I went insane to clean them; the grass snakes were up to seven foot-long and very scary for their vile looks.
The air was foul and grass was mowed but once a year, so that you could hide in it, and the soil being loamy it emanated a foul smell.
People would play ball there and nothing was decent about it, everything dishevelled, everything shattered, the keepers trafficking with strangers, and after exacting a tip, they let them do what they pleased, such as writing on the walls, on paintings and marbles, in short nothing could be filthier, nothing more derelict.
Water seeped all over through the roof down to the foundations, and it is a blessing that it has withstood centuries of such barbarity”.
I was able to see the reproductions of such frescoes that Carlo Lasinio himself made as a memorial for posterity.
Yet these walls that retain a single, circular path in the history of Italian painting cannot but stir the spirit of the more sensitive visitor. This cycle of frescoes spanning from the giottoesque “revolution” to the forerunners of Renaissance has touched many travellers that came to Italy beguiled by its art. So much so that Liszt thus describes, in a letter to Hector Berlioz, his visit to the Camposanto:
“San Rossore, 2nd October, 1839
Art was presenting itself before my eyes in all its splendour, universality and truth. Both feelings and reasoning convinced me more and more every day of the hidden ties that bind works of genius together. The Colosseum and the Camposanto are not alien to the Heroic Symphony or the Requiem as it might seem…”.
From that visit Liszt drew inspiration for his opera "Totentanz".
